[SevenNation]

> Everyone can agree on one thing about the past year. It has revealed quite how little economists understand inflation, including both what causes it and what causes it to persist. ...

The larger problem is the lack of a common definition of the word "inflation". This article is an example. There are 27 instances of the word and no definition.

The definitions used by most experts seem to fall into one of two categories:

1. a general increase in prices, as measured by the US Consumer Price Index or similar metric

2. a monetary phenomenon

But these are not by themselves definitions, either. The CPI is split into core, non-core, and a dizzying variety of other metrics. When people talk about "monetary" inflation, the landscape is equally fragmented. The various money metrics have been discredited by some, flat out rejected by others, and revered with near religious fervor by others.

If there's this much lack of consensus about what inflation is exactly, there can be little hope of predicting its future course, let alone controlling it.